Fires require three key ingredients: ignition source, fuel and oxygen. Wildfires do not burn spontaneously, because the planets are now 1.2°C warmer than in 1850. First there must be an ignition source. [emphasis, links added]
These can be natural, such as lightning or artificial, such as fireworks, sparks or arson.
Ninety-seven percent of the fires between 1992 and 2012 were human ignition sourcesAccording to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Mediterranean is no exception. Although the exact cause of the Los Angeles fire has not been determined, lightning has been ruled out. Whether it is an accident, arson or a broken utility line remains unknown.
If it is a powered off line, Southern California Edison must explain why it does not strip its transmission lines in the foothills.
As we all know, weather conditions are ripe to escape containment and spread.
meteorological
Before the fire began, the National Weather Service office in Los Angeles warned of “life-threatening” and “destructive” storms.
Residents are advised to stay indoors and away from windows, as strong winds with gusts of more than 80 mph are expected to hit the Santa Monica Mountains and surrounding foothills.
Such gusts can not only overturn trees, but also ignite burning useful lines and loose objects that may spread rapidly.
The weather behind this is very simple.
The northward whipping is caused by an urgent gradient between the high pressure in the Great Basin and the low pressure in Baja, California.
Although the gradient of pressure points to higher values, the acceleration is inversely proportional to shift the prevailing wind direction to the north, northeast. The gradient is tighter and the wind is stronger.
As the air quality moves toward lower pressures, it travels through the mountain pass, descends on the side, and then flows into the foothills.
Leaking air through higher pressure areas causes it to compress because the same mass accelerates the air through smaller openings – you will feel the urge to air when the spool is removed to deflate the tire.
When each kilometer drops, the compression is dried at 17.6°F and the air is heated. Once the hot dry winds reach the foothills, they dry vegetation in less than 10 hours, especially small diameter fuels such as branches, leaves and grass, and by supplying more oxygen to existing fires.
These winds are called Santa Ana winds. They happen every year and are familiar to every resident of Southern California.
News articles linking Los Angeles fires to artificial climate change cite increasing vegetation-induced temperature rises and rainfall.
Since its founding record in 1878, Los Angeles has heated up to 5.4°F, probably partly due to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, but There is no statistically significant trend in rainfall – 2023 is the sixth latest year on record.
In addition, it is worth considering that in terms of regional scale, The southwest has been dry since 1895. It has been defined as “giant” since 2000.
In fact, the Southwest has a well-documented “giant” history. Evidence of tree stand reconstruction suggests that in the last millennium, Western North America has been the current precedent of “big superstars”.
Since then, the 400-year-old Medieval Megadrought, which took place between 900 and 1300 AD, exceeded any recorded drought period.
There is no conclusive evidence that greenhouse gas emissions have triggered deadly fires. For example, the variation in air temperature and precipitation related to the combustion area is small. No matter whether the air is cold or cold, a large fire can burn.
A study published by the American Association for Scientific Development found that from 1948 to 2018, the maximum temperature during all Santa Ana wind-driven fires ranged between 43°F and 95°F.
The author points out There is no causal relationship between the area of combustion and the temperature. In addition, there is one The correlation between combustion area and rainfall was weak within seven to 30 days.
Fuels, especially small diameter fuels, can quickly dry out when weather conditions change. The drying effect of the Santa Ana wind makes vegetation highly flammable in just a few hours, even if the rainfall is above average.
Although the American Association for Advances in Scientific Research found that no fire occurred during 75% of the Santa Ana Wind events, it also found Humans cause 100% of the fires associated with these winds.
so, Compared with background environmental conditions affected by climate change, human-induced ignition has a much greater impact on fire risk.
There is still no consensus on the future changes in the Santa Ana Wind incident. A study observed an increase in Santa Ana wind days over the past two decades, linking this trend to the rising frequency of jet stream configurations in California.
However, another paper found that the southwestern pressure gradient drives Santa Ana wind to respond to warming in the authors’ model, although the winter downturn is less obvious.
These and similar studies have created significant doubts about the link between fire and anthropogenic climate change.
Reduce future fire risk
In dense forests, Northern California, fire extinguishing and forest management, such as sparse machinery and prescription combustion, have resulted in a century of fuel, mainly on federal lands.
By comparison, Southern California’s fuel load consists primarily of woodflower brushes and non-native plant species, such as eucalyptus, which contain flammable oils and palm trees that are easily ignited due to their fiber quality.
Although poor forest management is not a major issue, in the case of “business-different” emissions, the fire hazards for fuel reduction are smaller than today, resulting in less fire hazards for future warming.
Essentially, rapid economic decarbonization efforts will be futile.
Given that 97% of the fires are caused by humans, they concentrate 11 million people in the sunny area that they hope to live in six to nine months of the year until thousands of square miles inevitably add to fire events.
Reducing fire risk will depend on raising public awareness of fire safety to reduce ignition, increase fire resources, implement and enforce stricter building regulations that require fire-proofing of homes and ensure Southern California cuts in high wind speed events Electricity propagation is to minimize the risk of fire caused by power lines, or to bury its lines underground.
Although we can use many useful mitigation techniques, I don't believe that any of them will be implemented.
It is very easy for progressives to continue to focus on the “net zero” goal and blame every environmental disaster on climate change.
This allows them and their allies in the media to point their fingers at energy companies and demand expensive payments through litigation and legislation such as the climate superfund.
In the moral game of climate change, energy companies that produce humans need to survive become villains, Conveniently divert attention away from progressive policies that have increased fire risk in recent decades: insufficient urban planning and neglect of basic sparse bushes. If their prank succeeds, they will get millions of dollars in gameplay.
This time they must not be allowed to get rid of it.
Chris Martz is a senior student majoring in meteorology at Millersville University and a research assistant to the Constructive Tomorrow Council.
Read more in Washington Examiner [archived]
